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EgyptAir Flight 804 Vanishes From Radar With 66 People Aboard; Egyptian Government Addresses Plane Crash Soon; Greek Govt: Plane Fell 22,000 Feet & Spun Before Vanishing. Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired May 19, 2016 - 07:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

[07:31:00] CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: All right, we do have breaking news. EgyptAir flight 804 en route from Paris to Cairo on an overnight flight vanished off radar this morning. The French president saying it appears to have crashed into the Mediterranean.

We know few vital details at this point, most of the information about what might have happened coming from Greek officials. That's because they were monitoring this portion of the flight of the aircraft when it dropped off radar.

There were 66 people on board, 53 of them passengers, the rest security and crew. There were a couple of infants and one child there, as well. The makeup of the population of this plane -- you had about a dozen or so French citizens, 30 or so from Egypt, and another mix of different regional populations, as well.

We have CNN's Ian Lee live in Cairo with breaking details right now. Ian, what do we know?

IAN LEE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Chris, we're waiting for this press conference, which should be taking place right about now. Egyptian officials giving us an update on the ongoing investigation. But really, when you look at the timeline -- they're looking at the time when they handed off the plane from Greek officials to Egyptian officials.

They say they lost contact and then, as we've been talking about, the plane descending and swirling. These are things they're all going to be looking at. But, from the Egyptian side, we are hearing from the president's office that they have the armed forces out there in the Mediterranean scouring the area, looking for any signs of debris and any survivors, although the likelihood of having a survivor diminishes by the hour. But they are still hopeful that they could possibly find someone.

Their jets are out there patrolling this area. They have boats out there. A large operation, from what the Egyptian officials are telling us. They're also coordinating with the Greeks. But right now it is all about search and rescue, trying to find the remains of the plane. We haven't heard anything about the cause of the crash yet from

Egyptian officials. They are focusing on the recovery. But they have released some crucial information about the pilots, about the plane, saying that these pilots are well-experienced with thousands of hours of flight time. The pilot, in particular, had over 2,000 hours on this A-320.

And they say the maintenance is up to date, so they're trying to narrow down what possibly could have happened, but right now, they just need to find the plane.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: OK, Ian, thanks so much for all of that reporting. We want to bring back our panel of experts. Miles O'Brien, David Soucie, Richard Quest, and Mary Schiavo. Let's start with the timeline. A couple of very vital moments during the course of this flight to read about.

At 2:48 a.m. -- this is Athens time -- it was transferred. The Greek air traffic controllers checked in with the pilots and the pilots were described at that time as being cheerful and thanking the Greek air traffic controllers.

[07:35:00] A half an hour to 40 minutes later they tried to check back in with them and transfer them from Greek airspace to Egyptian airspace and they could not be reached. That's when the air traffic controllers realized something terrible was happening and began their distress emergency operations.

Mary, what else have you picked up on about the mystery of this flight?

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, I think one thing to point out is the fact that when they were cheerful and their last communication was normal, there were no problems noted, nothing to cause alarm, and then 30 or so minutes passed, in those 30 minutes it could have been completely a normal flight. They don't have an obligation to continue to talk.

Now, they did have the obligation to report in and exit the Greek airspace and report in to enter the Egyptian airspace. So, whatever happened may not have taken more than a few minutes. It could have been a very catastrophic event that came very quickly.

And from the radar returns, from what we're getting -- very preliminary radar -- and as many of the other commentators have said, this area is just plush with radar, including the United States. And so, I think that very soon the nations of the world need to cooperate and send their information to the investigators and the searchers to help them pinpoint.

But I think that the radar indicates to me that whatever happened, happened in just a very few minutes. Something very major, and then within two to three minutes they were gone from the sky. So, I think the 30 minutes, we can assume, might have been a very uneventful flight until the event happened. CUOMO: So, David, let's pick up on Mary's point. If we're waiting on corroborating and coordinating information to come in because there's so much surveillance in the area, what are the next two or three steps in your analysis?

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: Well, the first thing that I would do is to start thinking about that segment when they were not communicating. Did the communication come back while the aircraft was in that immediate flight time?

If that's the important part, which is the key piece, is that if they did not respond, even though the aircraft was still in that normal flight pattern, there's two scenarios. One would be that they were preoccupied with a mechanical failure or some kind of massive failure on the aircraft because the ADS-B stopped transmitting during that time. There was movement afterwards that wasn't recorded, so that tells me that.

The other scenario is that there was a massive disabling explosion on the aircraft, which would not be a massive complete destruction of the aircraft but disabling, meaning that that would explain these strange movements afterwards. So, in my mind, there's only two scenarios that I've narrowed it down to at this point.

CAMEROTA: OK, and Miles, the strange movements that David is talking about come from the Greek defense minister who, we assume, has seen the radar and describes what he sees on there. The plane, after they've lost contact, swerves violently. It moves 90 degrees to the left, then 360 degrees to the right, which as Chris has pointed out is a full circle, and then plunges, he says, 27,000 feet into the Mediterranean Sea.

So, is it possible to figure out if that means that the pilots were in control during the time of those movements, or if they've lost control of the aircraft?

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: It's hard to say right now, but we do know this. If there was some sort of mechanical issue on that aircraft and they had the ability to communicate, it's likely in that two-minute period they would have been able to get some sort of Mayday call out.

So, the fact that there was no communication, followed by these erratic movements, leads us down the road to some sort of terror activity, in some sense. At least that's a high probability.

CAMEROTA: But why not just a massive mechanical failure that happened instantaneously?

O'BRIEN: Well, it doesn't sound like it happened instantaneously because there was some sort -- the aircraft had some aerodynamic capability. It was swerving, turning, and so forth.

So, unless there was a total failure of communication that happened at the same moment, it's likely that you had some sort of scenario here where the aircraft was either disabled, as David has put up just a few moments ago, because of an explosion that didn't cause the complete disintegration of the aircraft, or some sort of struggle was underway in that aircraft.

CUOMO: So, Richard, what we don't know about what happened in the air may, sadly, only be discovered from the water right now. So let's go through the pluses and minuses of that situation. We know that the Greek authorities are largely in control of the water search right now. They have a lot of assets in that area. It's also a heavily- trafficked area.

It has water temperatures that are conducive to survival, about 20 degrees centigrade or about 70 degrees or so Fahrenheit. But, there are also some very big depths there as well as come undercurrents there that can move things around quickly. So, how do you see the timing and the different factors of the search?

[07:40:00] RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Well, I see -- you know, look -- the debris, I'm pretty certain, is going to be found quite quickly. It's well-trafficked waters, lots of marine shipping there. If that plane came out of the sky and broke up in that area it's going to be found, and it's going to be found relatively quickly. Or, at least, the debris and then the rest of the fuselage shortly thereafter.

And when I say quickly, Chris, I'm not talking about an hour, three hours, five hours. It might be a day, it might be two days if we take onboard from what AirAsia and what we learned about that. And then, of course, it's the usual of finding the recorders and deciding what happened and how this happened.

For me, at the moment, I still come back to this time gap of communication that we've all been talking about. A pilot listening to our discussion has just responded to me -- a commercial pilot -- and it's on this idea of when they were called at the transfer point and they didn't respond.

He says it's not amongst the first steps to communicate, but if we are called we have to reply, at least saying "stand by" or "complex failure, stand by". So, the fact, as Alisyn says, at 27 minutes past the hour, they do not respond, and then within two minutes thereafter they still haven't responded, saying Mayday, complex failure, whatever it might be, this is, I think, very telling to what is -- to the way this develops.

On this question of the swerving that the Greeks have talked about, I'm just going to be a little more skeptical than most because we've not seen this evidence anywhere else yet. So, I'm just going to be, perhaps, a little more skeptical than others in saying I need to see a bit more before we can go along with that.

CAMEROTA: We appreciate that cautionary note, thank you. Go ahead, Chris.

CUOMO: Just adding to a dose of optimism at this point, some factors you have in your favor, if we put the map up again. This didn't happen in the middle of nowhere. It's just about 150 miles or so off the coast so there's more proximity than normal.

What we're looking at right now -- this is the first word from Egyptian authorities. Let's listen in.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SHARIF FATHI, EGYPTIAN CIVIL AVIATION MINISTER (through translator): Can everybody hear me? Today is a hard day, as I said, and there are lives to -- the passengers and lives for our colleagues. And secondly, I want to use the term of the missed plane because we cannot predict what happened exactly.

Everybody's very sad today. Again, I want to use the term of the missed plane until we will have confirmation about this plane. That's key to be professional for now. I'm going to try to talk about what happened today. There are about seven press releases, which were -- yes, they got really -- there are nine, not seven.

The nine press releases that we got today -- we were trying to give you as much information as we can. But there are a lot of predictions though and some of them are contradiction each other. So, I'm asking everybody let's stop doing this and then do some certain steps, and then focus on finding the plane. Let's do our work the right way.

[07:45:00] This does not mean that the probability of a terrorist attack. It's too early to talk about this. What happened today is that the flight 804 coming from Paris disappeared from the radars around 2:40 a.m. local time. It was an Airbus 320 which was taking 60 passengers on the business class, and in total it was 56 passengers and the rest were cabin crews and security.

The last communication was between the airplane and the radars was about 3:00 a.m. and then after that the plane was lost. Around 2:50, there were tries to get in connection with the plane again but they failed. That nationalities which were there are 30 Egyptians, one British, one Belgian, two Iraqis, one Kuwaiti, 15 French with an infant, one Saudi, one Sudani, one Chadi, one Portuguese, one Algerian, and one Canadian.

The families of the passengers -- first thing we wanted to focus on saying that we focus on the families. We have families from all nationalities and we provided them with a hotel where they can have rest until we have a clearer vision.

Same thing for the families of the passengers in France. They're going to get free tickets to come to Egypt and we will make sure that they are up to date. Everybody's escorted and we have a special team dedicated to this mission, and we try to treat everybody in a fair way. We try, also, to make them feel comfortable.

The nine articles that we have gone through, you can have a look at them and if anyone has questions you are welcome to ask. The way to look for the plane, some of them are done through the Marines and I'm very thankful to the Marine traffic that are doing their best to find any information.

The incident does not have any new information except that the plane has disappeared. For sure, there is something that has happened.

REPORTER: How are you going to deal with the families of the passengers because they have no information yet?

FATHI (through translator): We need to know the names of the passengers. Let me ask the first part of the question. We just provide you with the information that we have. All what we have. We provide all the information we have. We provide it to the families right away. At the same time, they have the T.V. so they can watch the news and see what's happening.

[07:50:00] Regarding the list of the passengers, maybe my colleagues have done that. They provided the list. Let me just finish what I'm saying. The nationalities -- we have the nationalities but to reveal the names at the moment, without being sure of anything, there might be a bit of distress to some people.

REPORTER: (INAUDIBLE).

FATHI (through translator): The truth is that I have no details yet, but we try our best to provide you with information. Let me just finish what I'm saying. Can you imagine yourself in my place? How are you going to answer this?

FATHI: I'll do it all in English thereafter. So, you want me to reply in Arabic?

REPORTER: (INAUDIBLE).

FATHI: No, but why don't we wait until we finish in Arabic first, and then I'll be all yours, OK?

REPORTER: (Foreign language spoken).

FATHI: Can we go ahead? OK.

REPORTER: (INAUDIBLE).

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CAMEROTA: You're listening to the Egyptian civil aviation minister there talk about the latest in terms of this crash of EgyptAir. He did not give us many details. I mean, he basically was saying that out of an abundance of sensitivity he didn't want to release many new details, including he wasn't even ready, yet, to say that the plane had crashed.

He was still calling it a missing plane. He wasn't willing to go as far as the French president Hollande had, who said that it appeared to be an apparent crash.

We want to bring in our panel again -- Mary Schiavo, Richard Quest, David Soucie, Miles O'Brien. But, let's start with Nic Robertson, who has been monitoring all -- he's in London. And I know, Nic, you've been monitoring all of the latest details of what we do know, so far, about this missing EgyptAir flight. What's the latest? NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Well, one of the things that was the latest there from the Egyptian official was he refuses to count and say that it is a possibility of a terrorist event, which is where a lot of the evidence appears to be leading at the moment.

The fact that the Greek authorities were trying to communicate with the aircraft as it passed out of Greek airspace into Egyptian airspace -- unable to get a response from the aircraft at that time. The aircraft going through this erratic descent pattern.

More information likely to be forthcoming on details about precisely what the aircraft was doing, where it was, from potentially military assets in the area. We've heard from civil aviation officials. But the likelihood is that military aviation assets can provide more information.

But, at the moment, the details that we have point to this catastrophic failure. The unlikely situation where the pilots are not able to respond to air traffic controllers despite they appear to be trying to maneuver and control the aircraft through some catastrophic event.

That's where things seem to stand. The search and rescue is still on and Egyptians very positively trying to put forward that is still a rescue mission. That this is not terrorism. Too soon to say. But too soon to say that it has crashed, and this is where their focus is at the moment. Egyptian military, Greek military actively engaged. Navy and aircraft in that search area right now.

CAMEROTA: OK, let's bring in the rest of our panel now -- David Soucie, Richard Quest, Miles O'Brien. David, I want to talk to you about the search because the Egyptian civil aviation minister just sort of gave us a few logistics about how they are beginning a search and where and how they are hopeful.

But, explain to us, David, why you think that this might be easier than other planes that have gone missing that we've seen.

[07:55:00] SOUCIE: Well, what I've been looking at is the ocean currents in that area, right below where the aircraft last emitted the ATS-B signal. And right below that there's a gire (ph) that goes around in a circle pulling the debris, so it's really moving in the right direction to keep that debris in a specific area.

So, even if it was spread out across quite an area, it would try to bring it back into that area as opposed to a MH-370 or the AirFrance accident where the currents were working against that. So this is going to be a much better way to get that search done. It will be easier for the search and rescue to identify groups of debris.

CUOMO: And now, Richard, let's speak frankly here about why the Egyptian authorities are handling this with the reserve that we just witnessed. Yes, you could look at that as just discretion. Let's not call it anything until we know. But there is a history here with this airline. They've had, what,

some eight hijackings of their planes. They've had problems like this in the past. And how does that give you a window into how they're going to handle this situation?

QUEST: Well, I have to say that press conference, or such at it was, that we heard was downright depressing in the sense that -- you wanted hope for a little more confidence measures that they were getting to grips with this, particularly bearing in mind in the social media age where information leaks left, right, and center.

And you've got to look back, Chris, at Metrojet. Now, the aviation authorities, the investigative authorities, and to be fair, the minister -- the person we just heard was the minister, not those who are going to do the investigation.

They said right from the beginning, look, we don't think it's a bomb, we don't think it's a bomb, it may not be a bomb. But at the end, with the report, they did come out and say, quite clearly, yes, an explosive device.

So, I have confidence that a proper investigation will take place. That I've got no doubt about. Where I have a certain reservation is just how much chaos and confusion we're going to witness over the next 48-72 hours, the next five or six days, as the search gets underway, as the remains are found, as the debris is recovered, and as the black boxes are located.

CAMEROTA: Miles, I want to build on what Richard was just saying there because I covered the EgyptAir crash back in 1999. That one that was just off of the coast of Nantucket. And that one was also a mystery for a long, long time. I was onsite there, on location for five or six days. We were all waiting for word.

We were trying to figure out what it meant that the pilot in that one had been, Ibelieve if memory serves, caught on radio saying Allahu Akbar, and no one knew if that's because he saw something catastrophic about to happen or if it was something more sinister.

And it took years -- years for them to conclude that it was actually a suicide mission and I don't know that the Egypt authorities ever actually confirmed that. So, there is reason, today, to wonder about their lack of transparency.

O'BRIEN: Alisyn, your memory is perfect on this. I covered that, as well. I actually flew that scenario in a simulator. The National Transportation Safety Board, which took the lead on that because it occurred over U.S. territory, of course, was definitive in its report that it was a pilot suicide.

The first officer, actually the second officer in that case, pushed down on the wheel, the oak, and dove that plane into the ocean. The captain was struggling, pulling in the opposite direction. There was a struggle in the cockpit.

To this day, the Egyptian authorities -- the Egyptian investigators have not admitted what was patently obvious in that case. So, I do not have a lot of confidence in the Egyptian investigators to do a good and solid investigation. It's too bad it didn't, frankly, happen in Greek territory.

The Greek authorities, in the wake of the Helios accident -- that Helios aircraft a few years ago that was the so-called ghost aircraft --produced an excellent accident report, top-notch all the way around. So, we're going to have to watch this from afar but I'm afraid we're going to be seeing an investigation that is not at the top of the list.

CAMEROTA: Miles, panel, thank you.

CUOMO: The times have changed.

CAMEROTA: Please stand by.

CUOMO: The times have changed. It's important to note, Alisyn, as we get into the top of the hour here and reset, times have changed since 1999. This is almost, certainly, going to be an international effort. We see that the Greek authorities are in the water searching and we have proximity there to common waters, as well. So hopefully, the answer are clear.

And to give the Egyptian their due, his quote specifically is, I'm not denying the plane has crashed. I'm using the right term, the missing plane. We haven't found the plane, is what the civil aviation minister said. We're not hiding anything. Until the plane is found, I'll use the word missing plane. But, Alisyn, that's the word we have from them right now.

CAMEROTA: OK. Our coverage continues. Stand by. We do have some breaking news.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.